I used to be obsessed with building and hacking/tinkering with these Estes model rockets. One day in middle school – after which many of my friends called me “rocket boy” – I had my friends over in my backyard to test out my modified estes rocket.

Modifications

I hacked the engines and attached them to a 2 liter soda bottle

I strapped six engines to it and wired them all together

I launched it.

First, the rocket went up about 5 feet – then immediatly for no known reason turned dead 90 degrees and went like 250 mph right at my friend then crashed into a tree.

I will never forget just how ridiculous it was the rocket went so perfectly at my friend. The chances of that were really slim.

This was also a reason I think I was naturally born to be an engineer…because I even knew then I needed way more knowledge on how to really build things…but a simple electronics hack atleast temporarily quelled that craving.